Maker Faire 2012 NYC

Welcome, Open Hardware Summit and Maker Faire 2012 NYC visitors! Thanks for coming out to see the Keyglove demo and exhibit, and for being interested enough to check out the website. Hopefully many of your questions have already been answered directly by me or by the available literature or demos, but please feel free to look around the website for more information, or use the form at the bottom of this page to get in touch with me about any specific questions or comments. I would love to hear from you personally!

If you’d like, you can play with the Keyglove Typing Practice page used at the exhibit. Note that the first time each image loads, it will take a few seconds at least (especially the animations). The video looping at the exhibit is not available online quite yet, but it will be very shortly.

Interested in the Project?

The best way to stay on top of the Keyglove’s development is by following one (or more) of the various social media pages:

You can also subscribe to this website’s RSS feed, though honestly the pages above are updated far more frequently with little progress reports. I often only update the website every month or two with a summary of the progress since the previous update. Facebook and Twitter updates contain much less content, but there are a whole lot more of them.

On-The-Fly Brainstorming @ OHS and Maker Faire!

You guys are awesome! I’ve already had some great conversations with other makers, exhibitors, and attendees. I’ve run into a few issues during demos and talked about potential solutions with people who are experts in areas where I know nothing or very little. This is exactly the kind of experience I was hoping for. I want to keep you in the loop on some of this instant feedback, since you’re responsible for it:

Don’t solder the sensor wires to the fabric snaps, but crimp them instead. A couple of the wires have broken off and had to be resoldered due to cold-working. Apparently, soldering stranded wires with no strain relief introduces a bad failure point. Prototype F (not yet started) will use this crimp method instead.

Experiment with metalized epoxy for touch points and/or sensor wire attachments. I tried silver epoxy very early on (2010), but didn’t have much luck. Apparently, you can mix your own conductive material into regular epoxy for the same basic effect—at least enough that it will work to solidly hold the wire in place.

Use micro-USB instead of mini-USB for long-term reliability. For Teensy-based kits, I can’t change this because the Teensy++ comes with a mini-USB connector on it. However, for the all-in-one controller board, I can switch out the mini I was using and go with a micro instead.

The value of the Keyglove is in the open platform, not so much my particular use case. My personal desire is facilitating the development of a versatile, extensible platform, and that’s awesome. But a lot of people don’t see the same value in the same use cases, while at the same time they see tremendous value in use cases I may not have even thought of. I want to focus on making this platform ridiculously simple to use; this will allow me to do what I want and develop the Keyglove into the wearable input device I imagine, but also help others create many more amazing things with it as well.

Keyglove News Sign-Up

If you’d like to be notified directly when there is some very big news (such as the availability of the Keyglove for purchase officially in some form), you can sign up to the email list below. I’ll never give, sell, or otherwise distribute your address, and you don’t have to worry about a high volume of emails coming from me. You are not likely to receive more than one message every couple of months, at most.

Email Address:*

First Name:

Last Name:

Website:

Keyglove Interest:*

Assembled retail Keyglove

Unassembled DIY Keyglove kit

Reseller/Distributor

Custom integration/partnership

Contact Me Directly

Type something here and it will go straight to me! I’ll get back to you as soon as I am able.

Your Name (required)

Your Email (required)

Where did you see the Keyglove? (optional)Open Hardware SummitMaker Faire

Any comments on the Open Hardware Summit demo, the Maker Faire 2012 NYC exhibit, or anything you'd like to know?